Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A future version of sov should meet the following four criteria.

A diverse landscape of asymmetric and systemic warfare where individual player skill and commitment have a greater impact than pure numbers

A system of flag capturing that provides a novel, broad and ever changing gaming experience for both defenders and attackers

The ability for the playerbase to customise content nodes beyond simply setting timers and

To cater for meaningful content for both time poor gamers as well as time rich ones





Change. A term that has been in the air, on the minds and on the tips of every Eve player’s tongue since CCP Seagull outlined but a snippet of her vision of Nullsec and the future of Eve earlier this year. Since that time there has been a growing amount of interest and investment from the playerbase in approaching and voicing their ideas for how they would like to see Nullsec sovereignty based warfare evolve in Eve. Certainly CCP have welcomed this input and dialogue and with the power projection changes in Phoebe, it would appear that quite a monumental change to sovereignty could breathe new life into what is currently quite a stale aspect about the game.

There have been some great contributions from the community outlining some of the issues surrounding the current state of Nullsec sovereignty and rather than contesting or going over these in ~yet another long winded post about Sov~, I feel I could better aid the dialogue by instead presenting a different vision of what Sov could be like and why it should be considered.

Eve is a broad and diverse game. Its mechanics and intricacies are such that it can often be confusing to understand other peoples perspectives and often discussions become bogged down in debates over semantics on specific mechanics or are lead astray on complicated but ultimately irrelevant tangents. Many of the previous attempts by the playerbase to suggest viable alternatives to the current mechanics surrounding sov fall short, not because the ideas contained within are inherently bad (though this can indeed be the case at times), but instead because they suffer from a lack of caveat, or framework to mold the argument.

I would like to take some time therefore to help flesh out this proposal by briefly discussing a few observations I have made over my years of living in the world of New Eden before dropping my particular contribution.

Content Incentives and Content Enablers = Content Generation

While this seems like a very straight forward equation, it belies an often overlooked nuance of the state of alliance level pvp in Eve. Regardless of how many pilots swell the ranks of the great Null Sec entities, under the current system of sov, content generation hinges on the actions of a very small percentage of the Eve population- the role of the Fleet Commander. There has been a lot of discussion on what drives content in terms of incentives and rewards and, depending on who you ask, the answers lie somewhere between resource procurement, strategic dominance or simply entertainment and ‘gudfites’. Content drivers for players to play the game are broad and individualistic.

I will instead focus on the other critical aspect, the people involved in enabling this content to exist. Simply put, the current system discourages casual content enabling and almost necessitates the formation of an ‘elite’ class of players who are comfortable leading ever larger fleets to contest sovereignty. While an argument can be made that solo and small gang pvp still exists in Eve, the incentive, opportunity and encouragement of casual FCs to meaningfully contribute to contesting sov is almost non-existent. Any change made to the sovereignty system should encourage or allow for the growth of a middle tier FC class to evolve.



Get any NullSec player talking about Sov and inevitably the topic of ‘Blobbing’ comes into the conversation. Under the current mechanics, sovereignty is contested via attacking the defending team’s sov units or secondary targets such as POS networks. These provide singular nodes in which content (read fights) can occur. The most economical and strategically sound way of winning these engagements is often to bring more firepower or more defense or simply more of everything than the enemy can and overwhelm them by force. The reliance on Nodular content points on a single grid is the single greatest cause of the n+1 syndrome that persists throughout New Eden. If a new system of sovereignty was introduced that instead relied upon systemic content instead of nodular content, blobbing would cease to be the most economical use of force in Sov warfare.

Again, this isn't some revolutionary statement. Many others have already talked about ‘occupancy based sov’ and CCP is clearly moving down that pathway. It should be stressed however that if alternative occupancy based models still rely on nodes in which to encourage content, they must be much more plentiful and spread out.

The idea of non conventional warfare is very appealing to many of the playerbase. Rather than being part of the rank and file big fleet concepts, niche or specialised squads are becoming more and more relevant to sov warfare. Unfortunately, the fact that fights themselves are still based upon a single grid often limits these roles to secondary consequence or to non consequential pvp skirmishes. A new sov based system should encourage and incorporate the ability for an FC to employ a whole range of diverse fleet concepts in which to harass the enemy when overwhelmed numerically and still walk away with tangible results for their work. They dont have to ‘win’ as such, but the ability to say “We lost x but were still able to accomplish y” is far better than the current scenario where unless you win x there is no point in even attempting anything else. This narrow vision of success and failure in terms of Sov Mechanics encourages as “stand off/ stand down’ mentality within Null Sec leadership.





The space we fight over in Eve is currently very boring. It is as the great Australian folk singer Paul Kelly once said of Europe; “Every ******* city seems the same.” In Eve however, apart from the occasional shift in background nebular art, every system in Eve is relatively identical from the perspective of a sovereignty war. A large aspect of this is currently being addressed in the Phoebe expansion. Distance and Regionalisation is going to matter again during deployment phases of campaigns. The current proposals focus on the broader strategic geography but almost nobody is discussing the idea of tactical geography within a system. Once a sov war begins, every system is largely the same equation of investment of force. You will have a similar amount of sov structures per system and each of those will have identical numbers of timers. Taking space from a non committal enemy becomes a monotonous grind of timer boards and is exhausting for both players and administration. This was exemplified in 2012-13 when the coalition of Russian based alliances lead by Solar Fleet withdrew from the South and Drone Regions and N3 forces embarked on a several month campaign of structure grinding to take over the space. Many involved in the campaign saw this as one of the low points of their Eve experiences.

The other problem with this Strategic monotony is that there is almost zero diversity in the tactical geography where fights can occur. Space, being the cold, dark and empty place it is, lacks the diversity that ground based games may be able to employ. 90% of fights in Null Sec take place on grids populated by one of three things - Stargates, Stations and POS or Sov structures. Introducing a more dynamic geography, similar to the bonus’s of wormhole space while providing more environment on sov based grids would increase the diversity and tactical gameplay during fleet engagements.


Now would be a good time to challenge another misconception when talking about Eve. I have often heard the argument that Null Sec space should never be considered the “End game” of Eve, regardless of the amount of headlines and the unique nature that living in that particular part of the sandbox entails. There is some merit in this argument. A truly sandbox game should not have an end state as such.

Instead I want to introduce another related concept. Instead of thinking of Nullsec in terms of End Game Experiences, the opportunity exist to convert Null Sec into a Cumulative Game Experience. There currently persists the mentality that NullSec is vastly different to the other aspects of the game. Null Sec is full of bubbles, of unique and complex sov mechanics, of Super Capital fleets and of persistent, xenophobic, undefeatable entities. Combined, these provide quite the disincentive for all but the bravest of new players to get involved.

This of course does not have to be the case. Instead of nullsec sov being yet another set of foreign mechanics that need to be learnt, perhaps their is room for null sec sov mechanics to reflect a cumulation of all the other aspects of Eve as well. What could be produced is a Null Sec that incorporates WH mechanics, lowsec mechanics, faction warfare and explorationary pve mechanics in a new system that provides a diverse range of gaming experiences based of previously learnt skills in hi-sec, low sec and WH space. This will aid in the transition of potential interest from other areas of space into null sec, rather than the current soft barrier of experience that exists in game. I will touch on this point again later.

Holy wall of text!!!

Needs tl;dr, cause tl;dr.

Yeah I know. This is why I broke it up to sub-sections. Lots of reading but if you want a decent analysis of a subject it cant be condensed into ****** hashtags and 140odd characters

If you want a TLDR its basically the last 4 point summary.

Better?

The term you are looking for is an abstract. I thought about writing one but instead provided a conclusion in point form at the end of the post. I then recopied it now to the start of the post. How much more condensed do you wish it to be?

I get the feeling you didnt even both to read the post at all :(

bumping this too